Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

Fahad Hassan and his Daylert.com.

Whatever happened to: Two Web sites being developed by Virginia Tech students.

Then: In late March, Virginia Tech senior Kyle Jernigan started Photo Duel, a Web site that allowed users to vote on superlatives for several photo categories. It's a combination of Facebook.com, HotorNot.com and Shutterfly.com. By mid-April, the site had 350 photos and 105 registered members.

Another Web site, Daylert, was started by a Virginia Tech senior in October. Fahad Hassan's vision was to create a site to help organize students' lives. Users can join groups and enter schedules on shared calendars and send alerts to their cell phones to remind them about appointments and events.

Now: Reached earlier this month, Jernigan declined to comment about his site, saying only that it's not doing well. Hassan said he is happy with the progress of his site and is in the process of talking to investors who could give him $300,000 to $500,000 to use to hire more programmers and further develop it.

There are more than 200 people currently signed on, though he isn't actively marketing it. He hopes to use feedback from those initial users to come out with a revised version of the site by the start of Virginia Tech's first summer session in late spring. He's talking to professors at Tech and Radford University about the possibility of uploading syllabi onto the site so students could easily incorporate course information into their Daylert calendars.

Hassan said things have progressed much faster than he expected, though he still runs into students who want the revised version to be up sooner.

"I think people just need to be a little more patient," he said. "These things take time."

Original story from April 18: Tech student pictures Web success

Original story from Oct. 3: Daylert.com blends Facebook, Outlook